'Very right, child.' 'What have I for dinner to-day?' 'Don't you
know, sir, that you bid me lay by the _blade-bone to broil_.' ''Tis
so, very right, child, go away.' 'My Lord, do you hear that? Andrew
Marvell's dinner is provided; there's your piece of paper. I want it
not. I knew the sort of kindness you intended. I live here to serve
my constituents: the ministry may seek men for their purpose; _I am
not one_.'"[210:1]

One more letter remains to be quoted:--

_To William Ramsden, Esq._
"_June 10, 1678._

"DEAR WILL,--I have time to tell you thus much of publick matters.
The patience of the Scots, under their oppressions, is not to be
paralleled in any history. They still continue their extraordinary
and numerous, but peaceable, field conventicles. One Mr. Welch is
their arch-minister, and the last letter I saw tells, people were
going forty miles to hear him. There came out, about Christmas last,
here, a large book concerning the growth of popery and arbitrary
government. There have been great rewards offered in private, and
considerable in the Gazette, to any one who could inform of the
author or printer, but not yet discovered. Three or four printed
books since have described, as near as it was proper to go, the man
being a Member of Parliament, Mr. Marvell, to have been the author;
but if he had, surely he should not have escaped being questioned in
Parliament or some other place. My good wishes attend you."

The last letter Andrew Marvell wrote to his constituents is dated July
6, 1678. The member for Hull died in August 1678. The Parliament in
which he had sat continuously for eighteen years was at last dissolved
on the 30th of December in the year of his death.

FOOTNOTES:

[181:1] Grosart, vol. iv. p. 248.

[183:1] Ranke's _History of England_, vol. iii. p. 471.

[185:1] Ranke, vol. iii. p. 520.

[187:1] Grosart, vol. iv. (_Growth of Popery_), p. 275.

[187:2] _Ibid._, p. 279.

[189:1] See note to Dr. Airy's edition of Burnet's _History_, vol. ii.
p. 73.

[199:1] Marvell's commendatory verses on "Mr. Milton's Paradise Lost"
(so entitled in the volume of 1681) were first printed in the Second
Edition (1674) of Milton's great poem. Marvell did not agree with Dryden
in thinking that _Paradise Lost_ would be improved by rhyme, and says so
in these verses.

[202:1] Printed in